Columnist Sheila Stroup getting the feel of her new T-P neighborhood

Chuck Cook / The Times-Picayune Look for Columnist Sheila Stroup's work in the Living section of The Times-Picayune.

He had one of those mom-and-pop stores at the edge of the French Quarter, the kind of store where the same people came in all the time to pick up milk and bread and discuss the events of the day.

One morning, a longtime customer came in to tell him goodbye. She was moving, she said, and she was going to miss him and his familiar little store.

When the grocer asked her where she was going, she answered, "to Mid-City."

"It turns out she was only moving a few blocks away, " he said.

I laughed when I heard that story, but now I understand a little bit about how that woman felt.

For 18 years, I've written a column for the Metro section, and it came to feel like home.

Now, here I am in a new neighborhood. It's a friendly place, I'm happy to say, and I'm looking forward to getting to know the territory.

When I was contemplating my move to Living, I remembered that I had been here before -- for a quick visit. Angus Lind and I wrote a column together one time.

It was in 1991, when the movie "He Said, She Said" came out. The movie was a romantic comedy about two newspaper columnists, a man and a woman, who end up writing columns that appear side by side at their paper.

They disagree about everything, so, of course, they fall in love.

The gimmick was that the first half of the movie was told from the man's point of view; the second half, from the woman's.

Angus and I went to the movie together, the idea being to write dueling reviews from the male and female perspectives.

Unfortunately, it was not a great movie, especially the part told from the guy's point of view. In the theater, I kept shouting, "Give me a break!" at the bad lines that Angus thought were hilarious, and he would sink down into his seat and pretend he didn't know me.

The next day, before we sat down to write the column, a photographer shot the two of us glaring at each other with our foreheads pressed together.

I still remember how I agonized over every word of that column while Angus rolled his eyes and waited impatiently each time it was my turn.

As soon as I'd hand it over to him, he'd dash off three paragraphs and hand it right back.

I was the only woman in the room, with a dozen men craning their necks at the TV in the corner, pounding on the bar, yelling "Did you see that play?" and wresting the remote control from one another so they could flip to the Tennessee-Auburn game.

Near the end of the game, an Auburn fan took possession of the remote and began endlessly zapping from one game to the other. That's when I did the unthinkable.

"I hate that!" I said, loud enough for everyone to hear. Every man turned toward me, and the temperature in the room dropped 10 degrees.

In that moment, I realized why men go to bars.

And that was the subject of my column.

A few days later, Angus stopped at my desk and told me he liked that one.

"It was the first thing you've written where it seemed like you were having fun, " he said.

I stared at him, taking in his words.

"I can have fun writing columns?" I asked.

"Yes, you can, " he said.

I took his advice, and I've been having fun ever since. And I'm looking forward to having a whole lot more, here in my new home.